


three steps short

by rabbitprint



Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Eighty Sins of Sasamo, Female Warrior of Light (Final Fantasy XIV), Gen, Lalafell Warrior of Light (Final Fantasy XIV)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-18
Updated: 2020-10-18
Packaged: 2021-03-08 17:35:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,082
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27090565
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rabbitprint/pseuds/rabbitprint
Summary: Set after the end of 5.0, MSQ spoilers for Stormblood.The Eighty Sins of Sasamo were no better a sight in the afternoon than in the morning. They curved down the western slopes from Ul'dah like a serpent which had been smashed beneath a carriage's wheels, its spine cracked into pieces and barely contained within the sleeve of its own skin. Every stone was coated in dust. Every blade of grass was too.Yuyuhase was only on the tenth day of his punishment; there were seventy more to go.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 26





	three steps short

**Author's Note:**

  * For [whippetpuli](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=whippetpuli).



> _Prompt from whippetpuli: "Gosh, please just write me some Yuyuhase gettin' kicked down all 80 Sins of Sasamo by a lalafell pugalist WoL who is Done with Capitalism."_

The Eighty Sins of Sasamo were no better a sight in the afternoon than in the morning. They curved down the western slopes from Ul'dah like a serpent which had been smashed beneath a carriage's wheels, its spine cracked into pieces and barely contained within the sleeve of its own skin. Every stone was coated in dust. Every blade of grass was too.

Yuyuhase squinted against the sunlight, easing its way towards the horizon with a steady ruthlessness. In only a few bells, it would reach the exact degree needed to glare directly into his face. The guards hadn't given him a mask to shield his eyes from the brilliance. As they liked to remind him, he was lucky enough to have shoes for his labors, after everything he'd done.

He was only on the tenth day of his punishment; there were seventy more to go.

He'd been surprised when his gaolers had hauled him out and told him that he had an additional sentence to serve before his official trial even began. Eighty steps, eighty times, eighty days: Yuyuhase knew the story, just like any other brat who'd grown up in Ul'dah's streets. Initially, he'd been pleased about the new development. There was enough foot traffic about the Sins that it would only be a matter of time before an accident happened with someone's cart, or there'd be a scuffle that would draw the attention of the guards. He could escape as easily as blinking. He might even have value to someone outside the city -- someone who'd be willing to sweep in and liberate him in favor of what he knew of Shinryu's summoning, or possibly Ilberd's tactics.

But the guards had clamped down on all traffic near the gate, and had stationed themselves along the entire route so that he couldn't wear them out by making them follow along behind him. Yuyuhase hadn't been a spectacle, not even to the beastkin which often plagued the area. _Everything_ he could possibly leverage had been ushered away, preventing him from either creating a distraction, or benefiting from one. 

Then, after the first week of clambering up and down the steps, he had collapsed directly onto the floor of his cell when the guards had brought him back, beginning to understand why Sasamo had dropped dead by the end. 

To make matters worse, the Warrior of Light had chosen to watch his exertions. Try as he might, Yuyuhase couldn't wrap his head around the matter. He remembered the woman as being a shield fighter, Alphinaud's hired pet: a plain gladiator who had been naive enough to be dragged into a paladin's ways, stubbornly insisting on standing in the way of monsters big enough to snap her up like a mouse. Simple, Ilberd had said. Idealistic. 

Easy to manipulate. 

But she hadn't brought her sword, and she hadn't brought her shield -- only a pair of fists wrapped with grimy cloth around her knuckles, and a glare even hotter than Byregot's forge. Her hair was jerked up into a pair of thick pigtails, each one clipped back with leather instead of ribbons. The freckles across her nose were even darker than before, like a spattering of gnat-bites gone to scars. She didn't look like _anyone's_ protector anymore. She looked exhausted -- she looked _angry_ , like a person who'd been told to kill their oldest friend and then forget about it by morning.

And now -- just as Yuyuhase was slowing down on the lower half of the slope, trying to make good use of gravity to do the work for him -- she couldn't even be bothered to let him go at his own pace. When his momentum had begun to flag, she had jogged down straight along the middle inclines of the stairwells to peer at him, as if suspecting he was about to fake a stumble and pull a non-existent knife out of boots he didn't have. 

"Don't imagine you can sit down and rest," she snapped, finally deciding that he was being honest in his weariness, at least. "Princess Sasamo had to keep walking from dawn until dark, so the lawbooks say." 

It was a reprimand he'd heard from her several times before. The first time the Warrior had visited, she'd just sat and stared for every single one of those six thousand, one hundred and sixty steps. After that, she'd decided to complain.

He gave her an irritated glare, exaggerating his next step into a limp. It wasn't terribly difficult; he'd picked up a blister on the back of his left heel, and though they'd put a cloth on it under the guise of decency, he could already tell it was wearing thin. "Mayhap she had shorter legs," he taunted. "You can never tell with royalty. Why else was the present Sultana carried everywhere like a hunting hawk, hm?"

The Warrior did not allow herself to be baited into a reply, merely pacing him on the other side of the stairwell. She was a Dunesfolk like himself, though he'd never learned which mudhole she came from. All he knew was the sloppiness of her accent whenever she got angry, sliding around a lower class's lack of tutoring, peppered with dropped syllables. She was like _him_ : a rude castoff of the city's anatomy, best served by keeping silent. 

She was like him -- and she had no right to look _down_ upon him either, not when she'd been handed power without even having to sweat for it. 

He reached the bottom with only a short jump to neaten the way, meeting the guard's bored gaze as he gathered himself for his thirtieth lap. With the Warrior's scrutiny upon him, he couldn't even stop long enough to pretend he was working a rock out of his sandals. "You _do_ realize, there are only seventy-seven steps," he huffed conversationally, beginning the steady climb up once more. "Your count will be off."

"You still need to walk from stairwell to stairwell." Sounding unconcerned at best, the Warrior shrugged as she waited for him to reach her level. "The distance adds up."

"A poor substitute. Truly, the whole thing is a disgrace. Just like Nanamo's rule." Picking up his pace with a briskness he had to force, Yuyuhase passed the Warrior and kept climbing. Only four more steps remained in the set; he counted them off doggedly, not letting himself think about the dozens still waiting. "If you want, I could arrange matters with a stoneworker who has very reasonable prices _and_ a sufficient amount of discretion. I'd be delighted to help you cover up the Sultana's mistakes. That should be a familiar enough task -- right, Warrior of Light?"

He was just finishing the top step and was setting foot on the landing -- inwardly congratulating himself on the insult -- when the blow came.

It was a fierce kick that hit squarely in his back, sending a lance of pain throughout his entire torso. Unprepared for the attack, Yuyuhase hit the ground before he could even attempt to catch himself in a stagger, sprawling in the dirt. The stones scraped his palms open, stinging the wounds. 

He managed to roll over and squint up at the sky, even as the Warrior stepped into view to obscure it. 

She was breathing hard, arms held close to her body, as if she didn't trust her fists to wait on her permission before they swung. It was a novice's stance, but Yuyuhase had felt the force of her boot; it had contained all the pent-up fury of someone who had always held the line, who had _been_ the shield with her own body, and yet had never been expected to possess an onze of aggression within her. 

"Why are you like this?" she demanded. " _Why?_ When _lives_ are the coins that have been paid? Why do you continue to believe that _money_ is greater than aught else?"

It was such a genuinely _honest_ confusion that it was Yuyuhase's turn to look at her with disgust, half-disbelieving her own protests. "Why do you think? I had naught to my name!" It came out of him in a snarl, escorted by a familiar mixture of shame and spite that he even now wished to hide, like a birthmark smeared across his face that others would recoil from. "While the Monetarists spilled wine like blood upon the stones of their fine mansions, I was scraping their leavings from the alleyways behind! And when I _did_ manage to build something, with fine and honest labor, it was deceit which seized it from me to line another's pockets! What I have is always taken _from_ me, Warrior. You've your vaunted _Blessing_ ," he sneered, spitting it out like a dare. "You should have seen it all by now!"

Only as the heat of his indignation began to cool did he realize that he had said more than he'd intended. It was too late now, by any means. The Warrior was already regarding him flatly, her chin lifted so that she could stare at him like an insect, evaluated for a collector's pin.

"You were just performing what you'd been taught all your life," she said suddenly. Her voice was strangely reasonable, which was even more frightening than the kick had been: it was the calm, expectant eye of a storm, the center which bound the tempest to it. "How else were you supposed to survive, when the merchants made all the rules?"

Yuyuhase curled his hands experimentally against the ground to test how badly they were bleeding, wincing as he felt pain jab into him like a flurry of insistent needles. "The merchants, aye -- because they have _money_ , Warrior. Only the wealthy can define the law. No one else has that power." It was risky to hope she'd seen his logic after all, but maybe one of her legendary visions had done the trick. Maybe she had seen -- _something_. Something that Yuyuhase didn't want to consider. Gods knew there was enough in his life that he didn't want to recall. 

Shoving aside the possibilities, Yuyuhase continued to press his case. "What else was I supposed to do? Starve with the rest of the beggars? You think that being noble fills a stomach? I was simply following what this city demands of its people! How can that be a crime if _everyone's_ doing it?"

"Aye." The agreement was slow. The Warrior nodded along with it, fists gradually loosening, shoulders going slack. "When you were younger, you had few other options. You _were_ just trying to live. There were no good decisions back then."

Then, in a burst of motion, she swung down upon him, faster than he could scrabble away. "But after, Yuyuhase. _After_." Her hands grabbed the collar of his tunic, wadding the grubby cloth up. Yuyuhase's sleeves jerked against his arms as she hauled him closer to growl in his face. "When you had enough coin. When you had the chance to _leave_ Ul'dah, to no longer partake in these games. When ye weren't starving, weren't shivering with illness 'neath a filthy layer of stable hay." Her voice was turning blurry and burred, a taste of Ilberd's simmering rage caught in a slurry of consonants. "Ye didn't leave. Ye _didn't_ stop. Laurentius was a criminal, and we gave _him_ a chance. It could've been _yours_ too."

She flung him down, and not gently; Yuyuhase barely managed to catch himself in time to not crack his skull open on one of the steps. Her boot helped him the rest of the way into the dirt, slamming his chest and unbalancing him over into a sprawl. 

"And _that's_ why I'm having you march, Yuyuhase," she declared grimly, the sun gilding her hair and bringing each one of her freckles into relief like a spatter of blood on her skin. The wings of her pigtails spread like a laurel of molten fire around her skull. She stood like a fierce, brutal sultana, Raubahn and Nanamo rolled into one: a living sword formed by each knuckle of her fists. "Not for the circumstances of your birth. For choosing to keep doing it _afterwards_. For deciding you wanted to do it to the _world_ \-- and that makes you no better than the same people who did it to you first. Those last three steps _are_ there, Yuyuhase, but you've got to be the one to find them _yourself_. Remember that while you're walking. Remember that -- or I'll teach it to you a second time."


End file.
